Film and new media studies wasn’t a major at Wheaton College when David McKinley ’93, Rachel Bowie ’04 and Lisa Madison ’05 were students. But they all ended up with successful media careers, and their liberal arts education helped them get there.

The three graduates were back on campus last spring to talk about their experiences during Wheaton’s first LEAPS (Liberal Education And Professional Success) panel discussion. Sponsored by the Wheaton Institute for the Interdisciplinary Humanities (WIIH) and Wheaton’s film and new media studies program, LEAPS gives students insight into making the transition from liberal arts student to young professional.

These days, the value of a college education is often measured by how quickly graduates obtain gainful employment and how much they earn. But that assessment doesn’t account for the importance of education itself and how it can be applied to a rewarding career.

“We recognize that both of these [ways of measuring college value] are important, and we wanted to try to find a forum that would acknowledge that,” said Josh Stenger, associate professor of film studies and English. “You need to have jobs that pay you enough to live the life you want when you’re out of here, but you shouldn’t be here if you also didn’t want an education.”

Rachel Bowie ’04

After graduating from Wheaton with a music degree, McKinley worked as a shantyman aboard a schooner in Maine, where he actually sang for his supper. He then dabbled in sales before a tech recruiter friend helped him get a job as a software developer and consultant.

“Here’s where the whole liberal arts connection comes in,” McKinley said. “It’s not about the fact that I knew a guy who knew a guy. It’s the fact that my very first job in tech was not about programming computers; it was not about being an expert in any one given technology. It was about talking to people.”

McKinley shared stories about flying in a private jet and working on a yacht with a helicopter pad, all part of his new career.

“I’ve done all this really cool stuff,” he said. “The reason I’ve done it is not that I was the best engineer in the room, although admittedly I’m pretty damn good at that stuff. It’s the fact that I’m able to present. I’m able to take business requirements and business talk and translate it into technical action and be a go-between, and that’s something that liberal arts gives you that an engineering degree doesn’t.”

McKinley, who now works as chief technology officer at Oomph, Inc. in Boston, said his Wheaton experience gave him another important gift: his wife. He met his wife, Leslie Badham McKinley ’94, when he was a sophomore, and the two sang together in the chorale.

Lisa Madison ’05

Bowie studied sociology at Wheaton but knew from the start that she wanted a career in magazine publishing. That goal almost led her away from Wheaton when, as a freshman, she was accepted at Emerson College in Boston to study journalism. Her Wheaton English instructor, former Quarterly editor Jayne Iafrate, convinced Bowie to stay, saying that a liberal arts education would make her a better reporter.

“I am so thankful to this day that I took her advice and stayed at Wheaton,” Bowie said. “I ended up going to Emerson to get my master’s degree, but everything I do now involves skills I learned at Wheaton. You’re in an environment where you’re taught how to think. You’re taught how to ask the appropriate questions when you’re writing a story. That is so essential to everything I do.”

While at Emerson studying print journalism, Bowie landed an internship with Boston Common magazine, which later turned into a job. But Bowie felt she belonged in New York City, so she moved there after finishing her master’s degree, taking freelance assignments to make ends meet until she got a job. She now works as associate editor of digital editions for Good Housekeeping magazine.

Inspired by her parents, who own and operate a winery in New Mexico, Madison has spent most of her career “purposefully avoiding having a boss.” Three years ago, she co-founded a production company in New York City, StoryKeep, which creates audio and video documentaries for families.

After graduating with an English degree, Madison ended up in Washington, D.C., where she worked as an administrative assistant for the American Institute of Architects. She didn’t care for the job, and feeling directionless, thought back to her time at Wheaton.

“I remembered being down in the bowels of the library. Josh [Stenger] was teaching a class on [the film] ‘Gilda,’ and I was reading about the theory of film and totally having a blast over in my little corner of the library and realizing ... you can really do anything that you put your mind to,” Madison said.

She moved to New York, got a master’s degree in media studies at The New School, and began working on documentary films for nonprofits, developing a strategy for promoting small films through the same Web platform used in political campaigns. Through that work, she met her business partner, Jamie Yuenger, and eventually launched StoryKeep.

Starting a business and convincing clients to hire her has required a certain amount of what Madison calls “gumption.”

“People believe what you say you do, and then you do it to back it up,” she said. “I think Wheaton gave me that courage.”

A New Yorker born and raised in Chinatown, English major Persephone Tan ’09 was fresh out of Wheaton College trying to decide her next move when she met NYC Council Member Margaret Chin at an immigration rally in Washington, D.C., in 2010. After talking with her and expressing her passion for issues related to the Asian American community, Tan realized that she wanted a career in public service. Chin hired her to be a community organizer and policy analyst. Since then, Tan—who speaks three dialects of Chinese—has worked her way up to become the council member’s director of housing, assisting the 168,000 constituents Chin represents in Lower Manhattan with housing-related issues. “My focus is on the Chinese population,” Tan says. “Since I grew up in Chinatown, I speak the language and understand the community needs and the cultural norms. There are some Chinese-speaking tenants who know when they are being harassed by the landlord and there are those, English-speaking or not, who are just unaware of what their tenants’ rights are.” With her hard-earned title in hand, Tan is honing her skills even further as a newly selected member of the Coro Immigrant Civic Leadership Program in New York. This fall, she began an intensive study on how to be an effective leader and better the community in which she works. We caught up with Tan to talk to her about her job and the fellowship, and how Wheaton played a part in it all.

A fast-paced day: “Office hours are 10 to 6, but we almost never leave on time. My workday is all about problem solving. I have a lot of meetings with developers and housing advocates—anyone who wants to see more affordable housing in our district. I’m also working directly with constituents. For example, for one of my current cases, I’m organizing tenants in a building that has a slumlord. He’s trying to buy out the rent-stabilized tenants and harass non-English speakers. My job is to find ways to educate tenants so they know about their rights.”

Saying yes to Coro: “To apply, you have to propose a community project that you plan to implement during your time in the program, which is six to nine months. My project is to organize a community resource fair so that my constituents know about the free resources that are available to them. A lot of people don’t know about existing resources, and the groups that get taken advantage of the most are non-English speakers and immigrants. That’s why I applied. I want to help.”

FInding balance: “My work can be a 24-hour job if I let it. I have a BlackBerry and I’m always on the clock. But I’m learning to take care of myself, too. If there’s a real emergency, [our constituents] have to call 911. Still, sometimes there are extreme emergencies we can’t control. During Hurricane Sandy, our whole district was blacked out. I was working 12- to 15-hour days for two weeks straight, seven days a week. Non-English speakers don’t know what the process is for getting help. My role is to help them communicate and gain access.”

Wheaton matters: “As a student, I was part of the Student Government Association as chair of the Intercultural Board. I was studying abroad in Beijing during my junior year and ran for office from overseas. One of my big initiatives as chair was planning an activities fair to give Intercultural Board groups a chance to promote themselves and spread awareness of their efforts on campus. It’s funny—what I’m doing in Coro is the big real-life version of Wheaton.”

Best advice: “With your career, I’ve learned it’s good to take risks. If an opportunity arises to do something, take it. You don’t get many chances to say yes. After graduation, everyone is still trying to figure out what to do and how to get ahead. It’s OK if you don’t have all the answers.”

As a studio art minor at Wheaton, Leah Smith ’14 worked in many mediums—pencil, ink, charcoal, paint. But for her first job after graduation, Smith uses just one: tape.

At Tape Art, a small company based in Providence, R.I., Smith helps produce large-scale murals and run corporate art workshops. The murals, which are drawn on the sides of public buildings and spaces, are created entirely from painter’s tape.

“I like the fact that it’s always something new,” Smith said of the job. “When I was at Wheaton, I was involved in a lot of different things, like sports and music and research, and it occupied different parts of my mind and got me to think in different ways. I was afraid that I was going to go to work and be in a place where it was just about one thing. I like the fact that I’m at a small place where I can get my hands into everything.”

The Wheaton alumna met Tape Art founder Michael Townsend three years ago and began collaborating with him on other art projects. While studying in Hong Kong the fall semester of her senior year, Smith met up with Townsend for a few Tape Art projects, such as teaching art students at a high school and leading a corporate workshop at a General Electric office.

Making mural in Hong Kong

“We get people in the room together and give them a prompt, and the idea is to teach leadership and collaborative drawing. It’s a nice way to make everyone a beginner,” Smith said of the workshops. “Tape is something that no one has experience with, so everyone has to rely on each other to figure it out.”

Creation of a Tape Art mural begins with the team’s review of the space where they will be drawing—they are either commissioned to do a piece somewhere or they find a space they’d like to draw in and request permission. There are no sketches or concrete plans for a mural; instead, the creators have a short conversation and then get to work.

Despite all the work that goes into them, tape murals don’t stay around for long. A piece that takes several weeks to complete might be taken down as soon as 24 hours later.

Drawing at Worcester Art Museum 2014

“It becomes special to the people who were there at that time, a shared experience in the seeing of it made and of it disappearing again,” Smith said. “The idea is that you can transform spaces and show people the different possibilities for spaces without making one possibility the only possibility.”

As for whether her future lies in tape art, Smith said she’s open to many possibilities.

“I enjoy creative problem solving, and I think tape art speaks to that because you wind up in different spaces and you have to figure out ways to engage with the spaces. You can’t just draw on 8 1/2-by-11 white paper all the time,” she said. “It’s special problem solving in a way that really excites me.”

]]>http://wheatoncollege.edu/quarterly/2015/01/04/shared-vision/feed/0Leah Smith ’14 in Hong Kong.Making mural in Hong KongMaking mural in Hong KongDrawing at Worcester Art Museum 2014Drawing at Worcester Art Museum 2014Boston Globe shines spotlight on Adara Meyers’s playhttp://wheatoncollege.edu/quarterly/2015/01/04/boston-globe-shines-spotlight-on-adara-meyerss-play/
http://wheatoncollege.edu/quarterly/2015/01/04/boston-globe-shines-spotlight-on-adara-meyerss-play/#respondSun, 04 Jan 2015 09:02:26 +0000http://wheatoncollege.edu/quarterly/?p=10031Adara Meyers ’08 has been featured in the Boston Globe for her play Talk To At Me, which the paper described as a “tour de force,” praising her “zany, satirical script.”

The play is a humorous, socially poignant look at a large number of contemporary issues and their subsequent coverage in the media. “I began writing Talk To At Me as an absurdist response to the media’s rapid-fire coverage of the global recession, the Deepwater Horizon [BP] oil spill and protests throughout Arab countries, to name just a few,” she said.

Meyers is the managing director of Sleeping Weazel, the Boston-based experimental multimedia theater company that presented the play. She is also a playwright and producer for the company, which was founded in 1998.

Meyers grew up with a proclivity toward theater and live performance, but did not consider writing plays until taking Playwright-in-Residence and Professor of English Charlotte Meehan’s “Playwriting: Form and Craft” course during her sophomore year at Wheaton. She also took “Advanced Playwriting” with Meehan, writing a play called Snapped Cables.

“At the end of college, I decided I had no choice but to keep writing plays,” Meyers said.

She continues to write for Sleeping Weazel, along with the company’s artistic director and founder. The director’s name? Charlotte Meehan, of course.

“I’ve happily discovered that it’s the kind of work that starts out in a very personal space and grows into a collaborative process that reveals many surprising and intimate perspectives,” Meyers said.

Sleeping Weazel puts on a variety of different productions, including multimedia theater, interdisciplinary installations, and performance, music, poetry and video/audio-related events.

Meyers considers her Wheaton education invaluable. “That kind of education—one that honors scholarly inquiry as much as it does transformative social justice—is truly special and never stops deepening my empathy and drive to dream big,” she said.

]]>http://wheatoncollege.edu/quarterly/2014/09/15/reunion-rocks-rain-or-shine/feed/0Pardo_Photo3790Pardo_Photo3836Pardo_Photo3773SG7A4725SG7A4723SG7A4718KDN_1976KDN_1983Alum KDN_2595KDN_2005PardoPhoto-5900Betty Neal CrutcherPardoPhoto-5972Alum PardoPhoto-5951Alumnae/i board candidateshttp://wheatoncollege.edu/quarterly/2014/09/15/alumnaei-board-candidates-4/
http://wheatoncollege.edu/quarterly/2014/09/15/alumnaei-board-candidates-4/#respondMon, 15 Sep 2014 10:10:09 +0000http://wheatoncollege.edu/quarterly/?p=9847Collectively, they have served on many Wheaton committees; attended Reunions, Alumnae/i Leadership Conferences and other events; held positions as class officers; and remained highly engaged representatives of the college since graduating.

Here are the new candidates for the Alumnae/i Association Board of Directors:

Makiyah Moody ’00

“I have stayed connected and committed to Wheaton through an annual gift, as well as through the many friendships that developed while being immersed in stimulating classes or just sharing chicken tenders at the Loft. As a member of the Alumnae/i Association Board, I want to inspire alum engagement, be of service to Wheaton in whatever meaningful way that I can, and connect with other Wheaties along the way.”

Kathryn Leiby Schneider ’06

Events and outreach manager for Hope & Heroes Children’s Cancer Fund, New York

NOMINATING COMMITTEE CHAIR

Wheaton Club regional contact, 2010–14; APAC 2010–14

“My mom is a Wheatie, Class of 1971. On a college trip to visit Boston and Providence, she suggested we stop by Wheaton for a ‘no pressure’ interview. I loved it so much I applied early. I feel that with all that Wheaton has given me, it is important to give back. I’m proud that through my financial and volunteer contributions I am able to support the campus as well as current, former and future students. And I’m looking forward to joining the board and working to encourage more alums from all class years to get involved. The more people we have at the table, the more we can do.”

James Eberhart ’03

“I have a deep family connection to Wheaton. One of my aunts and my maternal grandmother are both Wheaton graduates. Also, my paternal grandfather was a visiting professor for one year. As a member of the class officer team, it has been nice to get the chance to reach out to classmates I was not as close to and get to know them and how they are doing. I also try to get back to campus whenever I can, for events like the Alumnae/i Leadership Conference or Reunion, or, occasionally, I’ll just wander around campus and pop in for a late-night mocha at the Lyons Den. I am hoping to learn more about the way that Wheaton connects with its alums and strengthen that connection. We have a very strong core group of alums. I’d like to find ways to reconnect with those who may have lost touch.”

Molly Galler ’06

“I’ve stayed connected to Wheaton as a volunteer for Alumnae/I Relations and the Filene Center, as a member of the Annual Giving Committee, and now as a member of the Alumnae/i Board. I’d like to primarily focus on how we spread the word to alums about what’s happening on campus, so they can attend events and participate in activities and groups that interest them.”

Stephen Larkin ’92

“I’ve stayed very connected with alums because so many are still close friends. We attend each other’s weddings, graduations. We visit each other on weekends, vacation together, grab drinks or dinner, if we live in the same towns and cities. And here in Manhattan, I’m always just bumping into fellow Wheaton alums on the streets. My number one goal as national Reunion chair is to help generate enough excitement and enthusiasm to persuade a lot of very busy and far-flung people to put their jobs, families and friends on hold and get back to campus. Reunion Weekend is magical, eye-opening and inspiring on so many levels. I don’t want anyone to miss out.”

Elena Wong ’07

“After my graduation in 2007, I was hired and worked in the Wheaton admission office for five years. Not only was I able to meet alums who lived all over the country and world, but I also had the honor of helping to bring in future Wheaties. I hope that we, as the board, will look closely at how we are connecting with alums—locally, through social media, or by bringing them back to campus. We must also think critically about how we can provide opportunities for prospective students to choose such a special place like Wheaton for their college education. That way we ensure that we continue to maintain our wonderful alumnae/i network.”

Before bringing his lecture, “Heureux Chocolat: The History of Chocolate in France,” to Wheaton this spring, Skye Paine ’00 rehearsed the talk at home in front of his two children, ages 6 and 8. Impressively, they listened attentively to the hourlong lecture.

Then again, there was a bar of chocolate sitting in front of them the whole time.

Preparing to give the same talk to a room full of adults at Knapton Hall, Paine nodded to a table in the front piled with French chocolate bars and told his audience, “I think you will enjoy it at least as much as they did.”

It was a safe assumption.

Paine, who studied art history and French at Wheaton and now works as an assistant professor of French at SUNY–Brockport, was invited to speak at his alma mater by Professor of French Studies Kirk Anderson—the same man who convinced him as a freshman to major in French.

Paine spent a semester of his junior year at Wheaton studying in Paris and wrote his senior honors thesis on French rap group IAM. He won a Fulbright Scholarship to teach English at a French secondary school after college and went on to earn a Ph.D. in French literature from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has been teaching at the State University of New York’s Brockport campus since 2010.

“I love it,” Paine said of teaching. “Sometimes people have professions and sometimes they have vocations; a vocation is what you’re called to do. I didn’t really think I’d find a vocation, but when I teach French it feels that way, like I’m genuinely trying to spread the good word of French.”

And one way of spreading that good word is to talk about chocolate.

The idea for the lecture came from a shop owner in Paine’s current hometown of Pittsford, N.Y., who asked Paine if he could come give a talk on French chocolate. “I just said, ‘Of course,’” he recalled. “She told me the date was maybe five weeks away, and then I went home and said, ‘Well, I’d better learn a lot about French chocolate.’”

During his research, Paine discovered three “tastemakers” who helped bring chocolate to fashion in French society: aristocrat Madame de Sévigné, author Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin and chocolatier Robert Linxe. He also learned that the word chocolate comes from the Aztec term “xocolatl,” meaning “bitter water,” and that in its early days chocolate was taken as a strong, hot drink in French salons. He also uncovered chocolate’s less savory ties to colonialism and slavery—lessons he imparted during his talk at Wheaton.

His lecture concluded with a tasting of three chocolate bars, each made from a different cacao bean grown in a different part of the world—Indonesia, Cuba and São Tomé. Paine asked audience members to follow three steps in the tasting: First, to consider the scent of the chocolate, particularly at its breaking point; second, to place the chocolate on their tongues and allow it to reach body temperature; and third, to observe more than just the taste—for example, whether the texture was smooth or grainy.

The experiment was undoubtedly a success.

Anderson said he was proud to have Paine back to speak at Wheaton. “When I asked him to come speak, he passingly mentioned he had a talk on chocolate. I thought, we’ll never have a more appealing topic for a lecture,” Anderson said. “If we can’t get people to come to a lecture on chocolate, I don’t know what we would do.”

]]>http://wheatoncollege.edu/quarterly/2014/09/15/sweet-lesson/feed/0History of Chocolate in FranceHistory of Chocolate in FranceHistory of Chocolate in FranceHistory of Chocolate in FranceSally Bachelder Keil ’72 immersed in royal mattershttp://wheatoncollege.edu/quarterly/2014/09/15/sally-bachelder-keil-72-immersed-in-royal-matters/
http://wheatoncollege.edu/quarterly/2014/09/15/sally-bachelder-keil-72-immersed-in-royal-matters/#respondMon, 15 Sep 2014 08:25:56 +0000http://wheatoncollege.edu/quarterly/?p=9896You never know what lies buried beneath a parking lot. It might be the last place to look for a king.

Yet, the skeletal remains of King Richard III, the British monarch whose 26-month reign in the 15th century was the shortest in English royal history, were discovered last year buried underneath a parking lot in Leicester, England.

Unbelievably, the bones were discovered on the first day of digging. The entire exhumation was celebrated as vindication for members of the Richard III Society, a group of admirers of the much-maligned king.

Sally Bachelder Keil ’72, the membership chair of the American branch of the Richard III Society, did not expect him to be found at all, let alone so quickly.

Though reticent to admit to it, Keil played an important role in the rediscovery of the lost king’s remains. At the 11th hour, two weeks before the dig was set to commence, the organizers were short on funds, in need of more than $17,000, or the entire project would be postponed indefinitely. Having only just taken on the role of membership chair, Keil digitized the society membership information, making contact information easier to access.

She leaned on her graduate degree in information science, and on her experience as the founder of AcquiData, an information-management software company, to help her with the project. The brand-new database of hundreds of Ricardians made it so that when Keil and her fellow society leaders heard of the need for money, they were able to swiftly send out the call for funds to the society members. In two weeks, more than $22,000 was raised from loyal Ricardians worldwide, saving the project.

It was a rather ignominious interment for royalty, despite the brevity of Richard III’s reign, and the scandal that surrounded it. The most well-known account of his life and kingship is found in Shakespeare’s play, written late in the 16th century, depicting Richard as a villainous and murderous man replete with a hunchback. Only two years into his reign, a rebellion led by Henry Tudor ended with Richard’s death during the Battle of Bosworth Field. The House of Tudor claimed the throne for the next century, until Elizabeth I’s death.

Keil and her compatriots in the Richard III Society believe that Shakespeare’s depiction of the king amounts to base and cruel slander, an example of Tudor propaganda penned by an advocate for their claims to the throne.

“Shakespeare wrote plays, not history,” Keil remarks during an interview over the phone.

Keil’s interest in Richard III began at an early age when she read a book in middle school about English history. As an English major, she didn’t specifically study the history of Richard III at Wheaton, but she notes that her time at the college helped her develop critical thinking, the kind of approach that would question the veracity of Shakespeare’s account of the king’s life. “You learn to think critically, to read critically, to analyze what you are reading, to move beyond what is in front of you; you aren’t learning how to do something, you are learning how to think.”

After a protracted legal battle over the remains, the king’s new tomb will be built in Leicester, where his remains were discovered.

As the legal battle wages on, the King Richard III Society, and Keil, will definitely be watching closely. And regardless of where the king’s remains are entombed, you can bet she will be there for the ceremony.

TheWorcester, Mass., Telegram and Gazette featured a story about Keil and the society last September.

]]>http://wheatoncollege.edu/quarterly/2014/09/15/sally-bachelder-keil-72-immersed-in-royal-matters/feed/0Sally Bachelder Keil ’72Jon Huss ’98 debuts albumhttp://wheatoncollege.edu/quarterly/2014/09/15/jon-huss-98-debuts-album/
http://wheatoncollege.edu/quarterly/2014/09/15/jon-huss-98-debuts-album/#respondMon, 15 Sep 2014 08:20:41 +0000http://wheatoncollege.edu/quarterly/?p=9899When Jon Huss ’98 first arrived at Wheaton, he was a shy person. That changed during his freshman year once he found an outlet for his passion for music after attending a party at a house on campus.

The party was on the first floor, but Huss, who plays the guitar, drums and keyboard, was drawn to the sounds of a jam session going on down in the basement. So, he went to take a look.

“I watched and listened for a few minutes and realized they were mostly playing covers of classic rock bands like Led Zeppelin, the Who, the Grateful Dead and Rush, which is the music I and many musicians of that time had spent hours on end learning and practicing as teenagers,” he said.

When one of the seniors at the party invited Huss to join in on the drums, he was happy to oblige.

That experience sparked his four-year-long association with the Wheaton music scene in which he formed bands with students and performed gigs around campus, including at the Loft and during spring break weekend. The journey also has led to his first album, “When All of Us Were Fine,” which he recorded with Frank Palmeri as the duo called North & West, and released in April.

The electronic folk album of original songs written by Huss and Palmeri is meant to convey a great sense of hope, noted Huss, who lives and works as a musician in New York City. “We wanted to convey the feeling that life is all about setbacks and comebacks. And, at the risk of cliché, it’s a call for us all to rise above whatever we let get in the way.”

North & West worked with Oscar-winning engineer and producer Robert Smith on the album and several Wheaton alums are featured. Tiffany Thompson Kostopoulos ’97 sang and Alexander Kostopoulos ’00 played saxophone on “Big World,” one of the tracks. Eric Gitelson ’00 also helped with production.

“When All of Us Were Fine” is available on iTunes, Spotify, Pandora, GooglePlay and at Amazon.com.

]]>http://wheatoncollege.edu/quarterly/2014/09/15/jon-huss-98-debuts-album/feed/0Jon Huss ’981998-Jon-Huss-coverJasmine Sewell ’99 coordinates painting of Crutcherhttp://wheatoncollege.edu/quarterly/2014/09/15/jasmine-sewell-99-coordinates-painting-of-crutcher/
http://wheatoncollege.edu/quarterly/2014/09/15/jasmine-sewell-99-coordinates-painting-of-crutcher/#respondMon, 15 Sep 2014 08:15:42 +0000http://wheatoncollege.edu/quarterly/?p=9907In celebration of his decade of leadership at Wheaton College, the college’s Board of Trustees commissioned a portrait of President Ronald A. Crutcher, which is now displayed on campus in Park Hall.

Instrumental in helping to make this happen was Jasmine Sewell ’99, founder of Sewell Fine Portraiture, LLC. Last December, the board turned to her to find the perfect artist for the job. Based in New York City, Sewell’s company helps to connect those seeking to commission portraits with some of the world’s leading portrait painters and sculptors.

“More than one hundred years ago, with the advent of photography, many people wondered whether painted portraits were outmoded,” said Sewell. “Artists remain busy with commissions, however. Portraiture is still very much alive and well.”

To prepare for the work, Sewell, who majored in art history, French and Italian at Wheaton, met with President Crutcher to view the portraits of past Wheaton presidents and to talk about his preferences in artistic style. He took an immediate liking to the work of James Tennison, a talented realist portrait and landscape painter, said Sewell.

Once Tennison was chosen, the painter and president spent time getting to know each other. Tennison read biographical information and watched videos of some of Crutcher’s speeches. The artist toured the campus and had lunch with Sewell and the Crutchers at the Presidents’ House, where all agreed that the president should be painted with his cello and wearing his trademark bow tie.

While much of portraiture today may be based on photography, Sewell said, “A painted portrait captures much more than a quick snapshot of an individual. During a sitting there will undoubtedly be interesting conversation between artist and sitter—a much-needed interlude in our overly technological existence.”

In this case, the artist was treated to a beautiful cello concert as he took more than 800 photos of President Crutcher posing in Mary Lyon Hall. Tennison worked from a single photograph to produce a 40-inch x 30-inch portrait in oils, which is now among the collection of portraits of presidents displayed in Park Hall.

Sewell traces her passion for portraiture back to her days at Wheaton. “I took my first art history and studio art classes at Wheaton and by accident got into a field that combines both. Portraiture is the painter’s ultimate challenge and, by its very nature, documents history.”

The tradition of portraiture is not just alive—it’s exciting, too. Sewell has worked with presidents, royalty, military leaders, and academics, to name just a few.

“I meet interesting individuals from all walks of life, and work with some of the greatest painters around. This makes each day different than the last and very exciting,” she said. “When I was a student, never did it occur to me that I would have the opportunity to honor the president of my alma mater in this way. It was with pride and joy that I participated in this project.”

]]>http://wheatoncollege.edu/quarterly/2014/09/15/jasmine-sewell-99-coordinates-painting-of-crutcher/feed/0Jasmine Sewell ’99Painting of President Ronald A. CrutcherTrading corporate life for culinary blisshttp://wheatoncollege.edu/quarterly/2014/09/15/trading-corporate-life-for-culinary-bliss/
http://wheatoncollege.edu/quarterly/2014/09/15/trading-corporate-life-for-culinary-bliss/#respondMon, 15 Sep 2014 08:10:59 +0000http://wheatoncollege.edu/quarterly/?p=9913I graduated from Wheaton as an economics major, paired with a management minor, and my goal was to eventually obtain my M.B.A. and keep climbing the rungs of the corporate ladder until I was the next big CEO. However, when I discovered that the path I was on was not the right one for me, I changed direction.

Today, I am the head pastry chef at Baked, an award-winning neighborhood bakery in Brooklyn, N.Y. My goal now is to one day own my own bakery. This is my second act.

Second Acts

Life is a work in progress. Sometimes the career path is a meandering adventure. Here, in her own words, Molly Marzalek-Kelly ’06 tells us about her road to happiness in our occasional ongoing series featuring alums who have rethought their ways forward.

Immediately after graduating from Wheaton, I moved to New York City to work at a law firm auditing cable companies, domestically and abroad, on behalf of the major motion picture studios. It took me almost four years at the firm before I realized this was not where I wanted to grow old, and that I needed to switch gears and do something that I actually wanted to do, something that brings me joy.

For me, the “aha” moment wasn’t, “I want to quit my day job and be a baker;” it was, “I’m not happy here.” The work didn’t excite me, and I realized that your work should contribute to your happiness.

So I enrolled at the International Culinary Center in SoHo while still working at the firm, received a degree in classic pastry arts, and said goodbye to my corporate life.

I’ve been baking ever since I was a kid. Both of my parents were great cooks, so that always left dessert up to me. Being in a kitchen and baking is something I feel like I could do forever. There is something so incredibly satisfying about measuring out the ingredients, preparing each recipe, putting the product into the oven, smelling the aroma as it bakes, and then sharing it with your customers. The fulfillment of literally seeing the fruits of my daily labor is the most rewarding part of my day. I love knowing that my daily work contributes directly to others’ celebrations.

My biggest struggle throughout the past few years was that I worried that my economics degree would be “wasted.” But now I know that no education is ever wasted. I apply all of my economics knowledge to my life running the bakery, paying attention to trends, customer demand, the cost of goods bought versus those sold, the fluctuation of ingredient prices, as well as analyzing and setting sales goals.

This fall marks four years since I switched gears, and it was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. Going to work every day feels like a dream.

]]>http://wheatoncollege.edu/quarterly/2014/09/15/trading-corporate-life-for-culinary-bliss/feed/0Molly Marzalek-Kelly ’06Tricolor_Sliced_01_originalBaker IMG_6254Newsmaker: A multimillion-dollar ideahttp://wheatoncollege.edu/quarterly/2014/09/15/newsmaker-a-multimillion-dollar-idea/
http://wheatoncollege.edu/quarterly/2014/09/15/newsmaker-a-multimillion-dollar-idea/#respondMon, 15 Sep 2014 08:05:17 +0000http://wheatoncollege.edu/quarterly/?p=9924Unsure of what to do after graduation (but pretty sure he didn’t want to work in a cubicle), ColinFahey’11 started brainstorming ideas with high-school pal Scott Pirrello, a Merrimack College grad. After “rattling off bad idea after bad idea,” they thought of renting televisions to college students. “I had a good feeling that there was a need for it,” says Fahey, an economics major. “Wheaton has a lot of international students, and when everyone’s moving out, a lot of them end up having to throw away valuable stuff because it’s such a pain to ship it back home or try to sell it. We thought, people rent micro-fridges; why not TVs?” He and Pirrello established a partnership with electronics producer VIZIO and launched CampusTVs in fall 2012, starting at seven schools, including Wheaton. The next year, they expanded to 50 colleges nationwide. This fall, they expect to rent to students at 300 institutions. CampusTV partners with a national moving and storage company that delivers the TVs to campus for move-in, and campus reps install the TVs. It’s a business model that seems to be working. As noted in an April 2014 BostonBusinessJournalarticle, CampusTVs has attracted $2.2 million in funding from Boston investment firm Nauta Capital—money that is helping CampusTVs expand its workforce and relocate from a small office in Weston, Mass., to a larger place in Boston. It’s also enabling Fahey, the chief operating officer, to finally take a salary. So what has he learned from this venture? “The most important skill when starting or running your own business is the ability to problem solve. Every day I’m solving hundreds of large and small problems,” he says. “At Wheaton I took a wide variety of classes that taught me to look at problems through many different lenses. I believe that skill has carried over to my business career and allows me to be a better leader.”
]]>http://wheatoncollege.edu/quarterly/2014/09/15/newsmaker-a-multimillion-dollar-idea/feed/0Colin Fahey ’11Vision, determination star in filmmaker’s successhttp://wheatoncollege.edu/quarterly/2014/05/07/vision-determination-star-filmmakers-success/
http://wheatoncollege.edu/quarterly/2014/05/07/vision-determination-star-filmmakers-success/#respondWed, 07 May 2014 10:15:24 +0000http://wheatoncollege.edu/quarterly/?p=9549

Clenét Verdi-Rose made his feature film debut in 2008 directing Skyler, which won numerous awards, including for best director in the Los Angeles Art-House Film Festival.

The trailer for Sand Castles, a new film by upstart director Clenét Verdi-Rose ’04, tells just enough of the film’s painful story to make a parent’s heart and head ache: A young girl kidnapped, swept away at the squeal of tires and held captive for a decade, abruptly returns home to her dysfunctional and broken family, forever scarred by her disappearance.

It’s a somber and challenging story for a young filmmaker. However, Verdi-Rose’s commitment to the craft of filmmaking, not to mention the effusive praise of his supporters, suggested that Sand Castles would not miss the mark—long before it was screened at the Palm Beach International Film Festival in April.

Clenét Verdi-Rose ’04 on the set of Sand Castles, the third feature film he has directed. (Photo by Ryan Hodges)

Sand Castles is Verdi-Rose’s most recent effort as a director. The film is written by and stars Jordon Hodges, whom Verdi-Rose befriended while they worked together on another film, a comedy called Minor League: A Football Story. For Verdi-Rose, Sand Castles presented an opportunity to grow as a filmmaker, working closely during pre-production with Hodges on script changes, with the cinematographer on planning shots, and with the actors preparing for their roles. The film has been received well at festivals, winning the Grand Jury New Visions Award for Feature Films at the Gasparilla Film Festival in Tampa, Fla., and receiving two nominations in acting categories at the Milan International Film Festival.

Verdi-Rose made his feature film debut in 2008 directing Skyler, about a college senior wrestling with personal demons. He won numerous accolades for the film, including best director and first-place feature film from the Los Angeles Art-House Film Festival; a merit award from the Los Angeles Cinema Festival of Hollywood; a silver award for best feature film in the California Film Awards; and Sklyer was selected as the world premiere feature film in the Los Angeles Film and Music Festival.

Prior to the most recent success as a director, he spent years hard at work paying his dues in Hollywood: He has been a first or second assistant director on more than 30 film and television productions, including the Sundance Film Festival nominated Little Birds, and the drag-racing biopic Snake & Mongoose.

None of it has come easy. His first few months in Los Angeles were rough. In show business, it’s a familiar story. He slept on friends’ couches, and scanned the Internet for any available work, scraping around for just a chance. He finally took an unpaid position in 2009 working on a $5 million independent film called Little Hercules in 3D, starring Elliott Gould, Judd Nelson, Robin Givens and Terry Bollea (Hulk Hogan).

His hard work on the production got noticed. As Verdi-Rose recalls it, “By the second week of shooting, the production company started me on payroll, and I have been luckily working consistently ever since.”

Some of the connections he made working on Little Hercules have helped him to secure more work, but ultimately it’s his work ethic and commitment that have led to some terrific breaks so early in his career.

That Verdi-Rose, who majored in studio art, is making a name for himself in film comes as no surprise to Professor of Art Andrew Howard. Howard taught him in a senior seminar course and encouraged Verdi-Rose in his pursuit of a career in the arts.

Professor Howard remembers that Verdi-Rose had a “laser vision,” even when he first began at Wheaton. “He always said, ‘I’m going out to Hollywood, and I’m going to make films,’” Howard recalls, “and he went out to Hollywood, and he’s making films.”

Verdi-Rose’s says that Howard and former Visiting Assistant Professor of English David Hopkins were two of the most inspirational professors he had at Wheaton, and notes that his independent study work with Hopkins helped point him in the right direction for a career in film. (Hopkins passed away from cancer during Verdi-Rose’s senior year at Wheaton.)

As a college senior, for his independent study, Verdi-Rose produced a documentary titled Life Off the Floor about a Boston-based breakdancer who leveraged dance to help youths on the street. He did it at a time when Wheaton had not yet developed its Film and New Media major. So he had to build the project on his own.

The breadth of experiences like this one, and the intimate engagement with the community at Wheaton, made it the right college for him, Verdi-Rose said. “I wanted a broader education than a strictly art school would have provided me with. I took classes I probably wouldn’t have at other schools, and was challenged and engaged by some really great professors and students.”

He studied painting at Wheaton in addition to filmmaking, and painting remains an important part of his artistic expression even as he focuses on a career in film.

“Painting is a therapeutic thing for me. It has definitely influenced me in my filmmaking, and I will always do both,” he said.

Though he sharpened his focus at Wheaton, Verdi-Rose’s passion for film began early in life. His mother, Margaret Verdi ’76, helped inspire that interest. An urban studies major at Wheaton, she later was involved with Falmouth Community Television and taught media production at Falmouth High School.

As a 5-year-old, the filmmaker toyed around with the family video camera, and occasionally acted in small music video productions for his mother’s high school classes. At age 12, Verdi-Rose hosted his own public access television show about comic books on Falmouth Community Television. By the time he was in high school, he was already working on his own video productions.

He credits his Wheaton education for helping to get him to where he is: “Wheaton did a great job preparing me for my career as a filmmaker because it prepared me for problem solving, along with offering the artistic support.”

]]>http://wheatoncollege.edu/quarterly/2014/05/07/vision-determination-star-filmmakers-success/feed/036-Verdi-Rose236-Verdi-Rose36-Verdi-Rose3Looking aheadhttp://wheatoncollege.edu/quarterly/2014/05/07/looking-ahead/
http://wheatoncollege.edu/quarterly/2014/05/07/looking-ahead/#respondWed, 07 May 2014 10:10:19 +0000http://wheatoncollege.edu/quarterly/?p=9554Alumnae/i representing a wide range of careers returned to campus to share their expertise and advice with members of the Class of 2016 during Wheaton’s Sophomore Symposium, which was held in January.

The annual event offers students the opportunity to network with alumnae/i and get career advice through a variety of workshops. This year, more than 200 students, 24 alums, 11 faculty members and eight staff members, including many from the Filene Center for Academic Advising and Career Services, participated.

The day was particularly special for Molly Tobin ’13 (right), who participated in the Passion with a Purpose workshop; the symposium marked her first visit back to campus since graduating.

“It was great to be able to share with the sophomores just how much my time at Wheaton defined me and helped me in my professional life,” said Tobin, who works as a regional advisor for Hasbara Fellowships, a nonprofit that gives students the opportunity to take trips to Israel.

The career-focused workshops at Sophomore Symposium covered subjects ranging from fundraising to journalism, study abroad to academic planning. Community activism and graduate school options were also discussed.

In her keynote address, speaker Jessica Bruce ’87, Associated Press vice president for global human resources and strategic execution, spoke of her own experiences as a Wheaton student. She noted that, as an art history major, she would never have guessed where her career path would actually lead.

Sophomore Symposium is organized by a committee of staff and students, led this year by Denyse Wilhelm, associate dean of studies and dean of the sophomore class, and Alex Vasquez, dean of advising and academic success. Also helping to organize the event: Vereene Parnell, dean of Service, Spirituality and Social Responsibility; Lisa Gavigan ’83, director of career services; Lisa Yenush ’90, associate director of athletics, Susan Doyle ’77; director of Alumnae/i Relations; and Marco Barbone ’09, assistant director of Alumnae/i Relations.

Wheaton’s English majors are frequently asked what exactly they plan to do with their degrees once they graduate. Back when Amy Rowbottom Clark ’06 was a student, though, she’d never have guessed what her answer would eventually be: Make cheese.

“Looking back I realize how natural this whole transition was,” Amy said, “but being a full-time farmer and cheese maker was not in my plan back in college.”

Amy and her husband, Josh, own and operate Crooked Face Creamery, a 200-acre dairy farm in the small town of Skowhegan in central Maine. The high-school sweethearts are already winning recognition just four years after they bought their herd of cows, and now operate their business at a farm Josh’s grandparents had owned for more than a century.

Their fresh whole-milk ricotta received a third-place ribbon at the 2013 American Cheese Society Conference, the largest competition in the history of the conference, with a record 1,794 contestants.

“We only did it to get feedback from the expert panel of judges, and were blown away to actually win an award,” Amy said.

Amy left behind the family farm in Maine where she grew up when she came to Wheaton. After college, she and Josh moved together to Burlington, Vt., where she took a job as a marketing coordinator with Ashgate Publishing and he worked with at-risk young people. Yet their shared love of agriculture was calling them back.

“We missed the lifestyle and knew it was how we wanted to raise our family,” she said.

Amy and Josh moved home and got married in 2009—but instead of going on a honeymoon, they bought a herd of Jersey cows. A friend soon suggested that Amy try making her own cheese, and she discovered a passion. She joined a thriving industry in Maine, which is home to the nation’s fastest-growing artisanal cheese sector, and now makes about 500 pounds of cheese a month.

Amy makes three types of cheese at Crooked Face: the award-winning ricotta, a gouda, and a double Gloucester. Each batch requires about 40 gallons of milk, which she carries herself from the milk room to the cheese room in five-gallon buckets—“very old school”—and then turns into cheese through an intensive process of heating, cutting and salting. She sells the final product wholesale and at farmer’s markets for $7.50 to $18 a pound.

Farming isn’t for the faint-hearted. Josh wakes up at 3:30 every morning to milk the cows, and Amy is up by 5:30. “That’s the reality of life on a farm,” she said. “We have no days off, no sick days or holidays. The cows must be milked twice a day every day.”

One upside to making cheese: As a value-added product, it’s less subject to price swings than the milk that Josh sells wholesale to Agri-Mark, a dairy cooperative. “You have to be your own everything on a small farm,” Amy said. “Not only do you need to be an expert in making your product and taking care of your animals, but also on how to sell what you make, find new markets, create your own marketing material, websites, brochures, and also keep up with bookkeeping.”

It all sounds far removed from studying Emily Dickinson in a classroom in Norton. But Amy said her English degree helped prepare her for the challenges she now faces in her cheese room.

“Going to Wheaton taught me how to learn and gave me confidence in my own ideas,” she said. “It’s that confidence and creativity that gave me the ambition to learn the art of making cheese, and has helped me wear so many hats with our business.”

]]>http://wheatoncollege.edu/quarterly/2014/05/07/delicious-surprise/feed/039 Crooked Face Creamery01239 Crooked Face Creamery003Leading the way at MFAhttp://wheatoncollege.edu/quarterly/2014/05/07/leading-mfa/
http://wheatoncollege.edu/quarterly/2014/05/07/leading-mfa/#respondWed, 07 May 2014 08:05:56 +0000http://wheatoncollege.edu/quarterly/?p=9452The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA) featured Sandra “Sandy” Ohrn Moose ’63 and her place in museum history in a recent publication. For the first time, two women are leading the MFA’s board of trustees together.

Grace Fey was elected chair of the board last September, and now leads the board with Moose, who is president of the board. Moose has been on the MFA board since 2002, after serving as an overseer. She has also served as chair of the board of governors for the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. Her three-year term as president will be complete in September 2014.

“Grace and I were pioneers for women in our respective business careers—Grace in investment management and me in the management consultant profession,” said Moose. “We look forward to working together and using our combined experience to lead this great museum.”

Moose has had numerous leadership roles, including being the presiding director of Verizon Communications. She had a long career at Boston Consulting Group, which she joined in 1968, and ultimately became a senior managing partner and director, and now continues as a senior advisor. In 2013, she was selected as chair of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation board of trustees—the first woman elected to the position since the creation of the foundation in 1934.

“In terms of a Wheaton connection, I had the pleasure of working with Deb Dluhy [Deborah Haigh Dluhy ’62], who was the dean of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts when I chaired the board of governors.”

It takes a special person to step into a job in which the first task is helping to plan two major alum weekends happening within two months of the position’s start date—and make it look easy.

Spend one moment with the collected and cordial Susan “Sue” Little Doyle ’77 and you immediately realize that she is, indeed, that person.

Wheaton officials have known this for a long time, having benefited from her leadership skills over the years through her many roles as a volunteer. Now, Doyle is putting those skills to use on a broader scale as the new executive director of Alumnae/i Relations.

Hired in August as the acting director, she oversaw Homecoming Weekend events and the Alumnae/i Leadership Conference (ALC), and is well into planning for Reunion Weekend.

In December, Doyle became the permanent director. She previously was a clinical interventionist in the Fitchburg Public Schools in Massachusetts, where she was responsible for the therapeutic work with students who face emotional and behavioral challenges.

Doyle, who is the director-at-large on the Alumnae/i Board of Directors, majored in sociology, with a minor in elementary education, and has a master’s degree in social work from Boston College.

“I am very pleased that Sue is filling this critical role, as she has been ‘one of our own’ for a long time, and has a deep commitment to the college and its alumnae and alumni,” said Jane Martin ’74, Alumnae/i Association president. “Over the course of many years, Sue has served as a loyal volunteer, as a class officer and national Reunion chair.”

Added Mary Casey, vice president for college advancement: “Sue brings a depth of volunteer leadership to the role of executive director, and her warm relationships and keen insights played a key role in developing the Alumnae/i Association’s strategic plan and in monitoring its implementation.”

Doyle, the daughter of Jacqueline Flagg Little, Class of 1948, said she enjoys leading the Alumnae/i Relations Office and being a part of helping to make life-changing connections for Wheaton students and alumnae/i.

“I adore Wheaton and know it to be a very special place, not only for its academic rigor and the transformative experiences it provides, but perhaps most importantly, for the quality of the connections that are made here,” said Doyle, who has attended every ALC for the past 20 years.

“I can vouch for this phenomenon both personally and from the hundreds of stories I have heard over the years from both students and alumnae/i in my volunteer work for the college.”

One of the most important goals she has for her department is team building, considering there has been a period of transition in staff over the past couple of years.

“Another of my goals,” she said, “is to find many different ways in which alumnae/i can connect both to each other, and to the college. I see this as being done in several key ways, including through affinity affiliations; work with the Filene Center, the Admission Office, and the Student, Trustee, and Alumnae/i Council; and through regional events. The programming in these areas will create expanded opportunities for alumnae/i to connect and will enrich the Wheaton community.”

Marco Barbone ’09 works to engage network

At Wheaton, Marco Barbone ’09 played lacrosse for four years, and then worked in the field of athletics after graduating. Those experiences are serving him well in his new position at Wheaton as the assistant director of Alumnae/i Relations, where he develops strategies to engage alumnae/i and motivate a team of volunteers.

“From sports, I learned how to work with others to accomplish our common goals,” he says. “I love watching teams develop as a family, and providing any assistance and leadership to allow them to achieve success.”

Barbone, who was co-captain of the lacrosse team during his senior year, graduated from Wheaton with a double major in economics and psychology. He earned a master’s degree in sports leadership at Northeastern University, while working as a special education aide at Newton North High School, in Massachusetts. He then became director of Penguins Select for PrimeTime Lacrosse in Natick, Mass., managing teams from fourth grade through high school.

In August 2012, Barbone was hired as the coordinator for volunteer stewardship and affinity programs at Wheaton, where he played a key role in strengthening the Alumnae/i Relations Office’s collaboration with the Athletics Department, including supporting the department in the development of the Hall of Fame. During his year in that position, he also led the efforts to create mini-reunion programming by affinity.

He now has big plans in his new job: “I would like to increase our volunteer engagement with our alum base, specifically with our young alums, through already established events, such as Sophomore Symposium. I am also hoping to help create new opportunities for alumnae/i engagement.

“Alum involvement is the most important aspect of Wheaton because that is what keeps the college running. The support of alums fiscally and on a volunteer basis provides the college with an awesome network of hard-working individuals who all have Wheaton in common. By graduating from this college, there are 16,000 other alums to talk with about careers, life and the good old days.”

Gavin Mackie ’13 focuses on affinity programs

As Gavin Mackie ’13 walked across the stage on his graduation day last June, he wasn’t expecting to help plan his own first Homecoming. But he did just that this fall, as the double major in political science and music was hired as the coordinator for volunteer stewardship and affinity programs in Alumnae/i Relations.

Mackie put his leadership skills to use in helping to plan October’s Homecoming Weekend and the Alumnae/i Leadership Conference—two of the biggest events, besides Reunion Weekend, that Alumnae/i Relations tackles each year.

Originally from Hampden, Mass., Mackie, whose mother is Diane DeRosier Mackie ’79, says he’s happy to be using the skills he gained from his undergraduate experience in politics. “Last summer, I received a Wheaton Fund grant to work in Philadelphia as a volunteer organizer for the Obama campaign. My experience recruiting, training and organizing volunteers translates well working in volunteer relations at Wheaton.”

He also draws upon his leadership background as the former music director for the Gentlemen Callers. As a student, Mackie received departmental awards in both music and political science, as well as performance awards for both piano and voice.

He says he enjoys connecting with generations of Wheaton graduates as he helps to organize interest groups and reunite former classmates. “My position is focused on organizing new ways that alums can connect with each other and with students,” he says.

Although the job varies daily, his goal is to create networks of alumnae/i that, once established, will continue on as self-sustaining.

“Wheaton attracts some truly incredible people, and it’s a great environment in which both to learn and to work,” says Mackie, who, in the future, plans to go to graduate school.

Three days after Hurricane Sandy slammed into New Jersey’s coast in October 2012, Cheryl Pembridge Larkin ’73 and her husband, John, drove from their inland home in Basking Ridge to check on their summer cottage in Point Pleasant Beach. Power outages throughout the state had cut off most news reports, but the Larkins had heard Governor Chris Christie speaking on their car radio.

“The shore as we know it is gone,” he said.

When they reached the coast, the Larkins were relieved to find their cottage intact, but shocked at the surrounding wreckage.

“Broken, crumpled buildings stood or half stood,” Larkin recalls. “Some were washed away. Sand dunes had been re-created in the streets. Wires were down. Garbage and debris were scattered everywhere. The boardwalk was gone.”

Larkin asked herself, “What do you do to help?”

She soon found her answer. Larkin and her daughter Kate Kurelja, both dedicated foodies, had been talking about collaborating on a cookbook. In January 2013 they were in Kate’s kitchen discussing the possibilities when “the obvious hit us,” Larkin recalls. “Let’s do a cookbook to raise funds for Sandy relief.”

In September, the pair published Savoring the Shore, a culinary celebration of the Jersey shore that serves up more than 100 recipes from home cooks and celebrity chefs. All proceeds will benefit the hurricane recovery efforts.

Larkin and Kurelja, both marketing professionals, combined traditional marketing and social media networking to solicit recipes and drum up support. They created a food blog and a Facebook page, and recruited Kate’s sister Sarah to help spread the word. On Facebook, they previewed recipes from their book and also shared news updates on the recovery efforts. They also connected with Karen Schnitzspahn, author of Jersey Shore Food History: Victorian Feasts to Boardwalk Treats. Schnitzspahn contributed a recipe, Fried Oysters on Toast, and became their mentor.

Contributors included friends, charitable organizations, and renowned chefs such as Eric LeVine, owner of Morris Tap & Grill in Randolph, N.J., and a “Chopped” champion; restaurateur David Burke, a two-time contestant on Bravo’s “Top Chef Masters”; and Michel Richard, a James Beard Foundation Award winner who also did a sketch and a painting for the book.

The book features many seafood recipes but also great variety in such dishes as Black Thai, a vegetarian entrée; Grilled Sweet Jersey Corn Chowder; and Choco Avo Mousse, a combination of avocado, carob and almond butter.

Today, the Jersey shore is rebounding, but a full recovery could take years.

“There are still families who are opening the doors of their houses for the first time—if they are lucky enough to have doors—and dealing with the devastation,” Larkin told the Quarterly in June. That same month saw the re-opening of one of Larkin’s favorite places, Mueller’s Bakery, in Bay Head, which had been gutted by the storm. The owners contributed their recipe for sour cream coffee cake.

Larkin hopes her cookbook will do its modest part to help the relief effort while also nurturing pride in the area’s rich culinary heritage. “In the heart of shore lovers’ memories and traditions,” she says, “comes the strength to rebuild.”

That’s what Hidden Valley Ranch, a soap opera take off written by alum siblings Patricia and Alfred McKeever, offered audiences this fall in the Kresge Experimental Theatre.

It was the alums’ dramatic return to campus under the auspices of the Evelyn Danzig Haas ’39 Visiting Artists Program. The play they wrote featured a cast of 18 Wheaton students, and was one of three college productions last semester that provided more than 40 students with the opportunity to perform on stage.

For Patricia and Alfred, it was a return to Wheaton after more than a decade. After the pair graduated in 1997 and 1999, respectively, they bid farewell to their nearby hometown of Mansfield, Mass., for a destination common among their fellow theater majors: Broadway.

Like many aspiring actors, the McKeevers spent their days waiting in long lines to audition, and worked other jobs to pay the rent. Over time they began looking for other creative outlets, and, soon, they found one that tapped into their mutual taste for bawdy, fast-paced wisecracks: freelance comedy writing.

“We’ve always had it in our blood that we wanted to do something a little different, a little avant-garde,” Alfred said.

Patricia (’97) and Alfred (’99) McKeever with the cast of Hidden Valley Ranch

The siblings found work in New York’s eclectic late-night variety scene, penning jokes for drag queens like Shequida (from “America’s Got Talent”) and other performers. Before long they weren’t just writing the jokes—they were delivering them on stage. During one of their nightclub gigs, the McKeevers dreamed up Hidden Valley Ranch, a naughty comedy about the inheritance battle in a dysfunctional family after the death of the father, who made a fortune selling salad dressing.

“In this business what you really need to be is a shape shifter,” Patricia said, “because if you’re not getting work in one area you need to open up doors for yourself in other areas.”

Stephanie Burlington Daniels ’97, chair of the Department of Theatre Studies and Dance, applauds the siblings for coming back to Wheaton to connect with students.

“We are always looking for ways and opportunities to expose our students to all kinds of theater-makers who can share information about the life they have made in professional theater,” Daniels said.

She hopes the experience will leave the students not only inspired but “also motivated to take ownership of their own work—not wait around for someone else to give them work.”

Patricia agrees: “It’s important to pass on to these students that you have to have your own voice as artists.”

One of the cast members, Erika McCormack ’15, said bringing in guest directors to produce an original work “shakes things up” for the actors.

“Patty and Al are fresh and full of energy,” she said. “They are also comedic geniuses.”

There is also a bittersweet element to the story of how Hidden Valley Ranch came to Wheaton.

The McKeevers’ mother passed away suddenly last winter, and the siblings moved home to Mansfield to support their widowed father. After they returned, Professor Daniels reached out to Alfred to offer condolences, and eventually she suggested the duo bring their talents back to the college.

]]>http://wheatoncollege.edu/quarterly/2014/02/07/alums-stage-spicy-theater-fun/feed/0hvr-Patricia-AlfredSiblings Patricia (’97) and Alfred (’99) McKeeverhvr-castPatricia (’97) and Alfred (’99) McKeever with the cast of Hidden Valley RanchDiane C. Nordin ’80 elected to Fannie Mae board of directorshttp://wheatoncollege.edu/quarterly/2014/02/07/diane-nordin-80-elected-fannie-mae-board-directors/
http://wheatoncollege.edu/quarterly/2014/02/07/diane-nordin-80-elected-fannie-mae-board-directors/#respondFri, 07 Feb 2014 09:20:05 +0000http://wheatoncollege.edu/quarterly/?p=9112Fannie Mae recently announced that Diane C. Nordin has been elected to the company’s board of directors.

Nordin, a seasoned asset management executive, will offer her expertise to the board’s governance of Fannie Mae, as the company works to create a safer, more transparent, and sustainable housing finance system.

“Ms. Nordin brings to the board a deep and broad understanding of the global markets and excellent fixed income investment experience,” Philip Laskawy, board chair, stated in a press release. “Her experience coupled with her pragmatic approach will be valuable as we continue to strengthen the company and improve the housing finance system.”

Nordin most recently spent a year as a Fellow at the Advanced Leadership Initiative at Harvard University. Prior to this, she spent 20 years at Wellington Management Company, LLP, a private asset management company, where she was a partner from 1995 to 2011.

She served in many global leadership roles at Wellington, most notably as head of fixed income, vice chair of the Compensation Committee and audit chair of the Wellington Management Trust Company.

She graduated from Wheaton with a bachelor’s degree in biology. She also participated in the Harvard Business School Leading Professional Service Firms program. Nordin currently serves as a trustee at Wheaton, where she is an Audit Committee member and chair of the Investment Committee. She is also a board member of the Vineyard Nursing Association of Martha’s Vineyard, a director of the Appalachian Mountain Club and a foundation board member of the Massachusetts College of Art and Design.